


Grief

by GiggleSnortBangDead



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 03:28:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GiggleSnortBangDead/pseuds/GiggleSnortBangDead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melissa McCall had once read that heterosexuality, or heterosexual contact to be specific, was the leading cause of death in this world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grief

Melissa McCall had once read that heterosexuality, or heterosexual contact to be specific, was the leading cause of death in this world. Nothing caused as much death as heterosexuality. Becoming a parent is the most common way of becoming a murderer. By bringing life into the world, you effectively bring death as well, seeing how all things die.

The essay she read this in had been a joke; not satire, exactly, but something like it. However, Melissa took to reminding herself of this writing when her mind wandered. When seeking to find an explanation, blame of the Other would often force its way into her mind.

She might blame Derek Hale, for being an adult who was still a child, or Stiles, for not doing more, or the Sheriff, for being the one to tell her and having an unmarked, unharmed son, or whatever _Thing_ it was that had caused Stiles to not do enough and Derek Hale to act childishly and the Sheriff to have to come to her with his sad eyes and down-turned mouth and breathing, sobbing child. 

The Sheriff is trying to explain to her, trying to tell her about how her son died alone, without pack or friends to save him, in the rain, killed by Things that were so much stronger than him. And, he probably suffered, but the Sheriff doesn’t say that. He just says an apology after an apology and all her instincts will allow is for her to beat her own breast as her mind screams _my son is dead my son is dead my son is dead_.

The Sheriff’s son stood next to him and Melissa couldn’t understand why he had come along. The young man - _boy_ \- was sobbing, blubbering, but was the only sound she could hold on to in that moment. She couldn’t hear the Sheriff’s speech; only see him, as he stands next to his wailing son, whom she _can_ hear - who is alive and breathing and crying.

Why did the Sheriff bring him? Was he trying to show off?

Melissa hates them both for a second, just a second, and then hates herself to balance everything out. 

Which is why she must blame herself for his death. By bringing her son into this world, she had doomed him to die. Everything else was merely a detail.

~~~~~

Everyone tells her to take a week - two weeks, a month - off of work which she would have if there had been someone else at home for her to comfort. But, when she shows up for work that Thursday morning, she’s escorted right back out the door.

She tries to remind herself that it’s schooltime, as she reenters the house, and Scott wouldn’t have been here anyway. But, flipping on the TV, she turns on a local news station and finds out that school is off for the next two days in order for the student body to mourn the loss of their star lacrosse player, Scott McCall, who was tragically mauled to death by a mountain lion last night and died before making it to the nearest medical facility. 

Melissa sees Dr. Deaton be interviewed, as her son’s boss, mentor, and friend. She can tell how regrettable he thinks this is and she can hear the parties tonight as kids crack open a beer and toast to Scott McCall who ended up mysteriously in so many pieces they won’t have enough to bury and who kicked it so they didn’t have to take that chemistry final today. Here’s to Scott McCall - school hero. Protector of the Long Weekend.

And, all of a sudden, she can’t breath anymore because her son is dead and she is alone and soon she’ll have to take care of funeral arrangements and get a plot in the cemetery and she’s sobbing because her son is _dead_.

Sobbing isn’t even enough, will never be enough, and all she wants to do is scream and tear out her own throat because that is the only way she can imaging properly grieving. She screams and make a first but has nothing to hit, so she beats once over her own chest, willing her heart to stop because she doesn’t want it anymore. 

~~~~~

Stiles came over from time to time, but he always looked so lost and so sad to be there that he stopped after a while. Derek Hale came once but he was only there for a terse apology and condolence. He and his guilt had taken had taken up so much space that Melissa hadn’t been able to answer him.

It wasn’t as if in the days following, she was alone. People she didn’t know were her friends would spend hours at her house, sitting quietly in her kitchen while she stayed in her own room. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that she didn’t socialize, except Derek’s for being childish and Stiles’s for being negligent and the Sheriff’s for being the messenger and her’s for having a son.

And, soon, she would feel herself clawing at her own chest, trying to get to her heart. The only way to stop it would be to dig it out and if she rubbed at the flesh enough, maybe she could stop.

~~~~~

A month after, she’s working a night shift and someone brings in a young man, hit by a car. His parents are terrified and shocked and unable to cope with all of their grief as she tells them that he is gone. 

Melissa is torn between comforting them and screaming, pulling out her own hair, telling them that their loss was _nothing_. Their son died in an accident, her son was taken deliberately from her. Their son had never done anything of worth and died painlessly, just like how he lived while her son... Her son died a warrior and he died for good and he died kicking and fighting and screaming and _in pain_ and she had been able to do nothing about it.

Instead, she leaves work early to go home with the intention of crying. When she gets there, her house is so empty that she forgets the point.


End file.
